


Rest

by Adventures_in_Writing



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 12:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4835969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adventures_in_Writing/pseuds/Adventures_in_Writing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Blues try to figure out how to help a failing AI.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rest

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt received on [ my Tumblr](http://an-adventure-in-writing.tumblr.com/): Sad sad sad prompt. Set in like s13 and epsilon is about to die (or whatever AI's do) and the Reds and blues saying goodbye to him 3 
> 
> I wrote this back in May, before season 13 had finished.

Church had died so many times already that, at first, they didn’t believe it could actually happen. He always came back to life somehow.

Apparently not this time.

“What can we do?” Caboose asked. Caboose didn’t want his best friend to leave again.

“I don’t know,” Carolina sighed. “I don’t know if its something wrong with his programming, or if he just needs a hardware update. We never covered this kind of thing in Project Freelancer. I guess they weren’t expecting any of us to last that long.”

“Would shutting him down help?” Donut asked. “Like a vacation! He’d come back online all rested and renewed.”

Lopez didn’t want to say anything on the off chance that Donut would actually interpret him correctly. Hardware could be upgraded easily enough. They could give Church his own body, but Lopez didn’t think it would do much. This seemed like a programming issue and that would be much, much harder to fix.

Unless they had a computer science genius on the team, there wasn’t anyone around who could rewrite the AI’s operating software.

“He’s a computer, Donut,” Simmons said. “And an old one at that. Old computers don’t magically fix themselves if you shut them down. They need to be upgraded.”

“Si,” Lopez agreed. Someone else had said it.

Tucker looked to the Carolina’s shoulder, at the spot where Epsilon would always materialise. It had taken a while to accept that Epsilon wasn’t Church, but he’d come to like the AI for who he currently was.  Carolina had pulled Epsilon to try and preserve what little sanity he had left.

“I don’t think a shiny new body is gonna fix this,” Tucker said.

“No,” Washington said, coming out from one of the nearby warehouses. “This is more serious than a hardware problem.”

He set down something that looked vaguely familiar. Tucker couldn’t place it, but he’d seen something like it one before.

“Is that one of those memory things?” Grif asked.

Wash nodded. “It won’t fix the problem, but it can maybe help buy us some time to think of a solution if we put Epsilon back into storage before he…”

It wasn’t the greatest idea. Who knew how long Epsilon could last in the memory unit? Who knew if he’d even survive being put in there? It was their best shot, and hey, sheer dumb luck had saved the Reds and Blues time and time again: surely it would save them this time too.

“I say we go for it,” Carolina said.

Wash looked to Caboose and Tucker.

“You guys have known Epsilon longer, even though he now sticks with Carolina and even though he was once my AI. What do you want to do?”

Tucker sighed. “Caboose, if we put Church back in the memory unit, we can maybe bring him back out again, one day. If we don’t…”

“Let’s put him back inside the play pen,” Caboose said with a nod. He’d helped Epsilon out of it once before, he’d help Epsilon out again.

“All right then,” Carolina said as she brought Epsilon back online. “Epsilon? We need you out here for a moment.”

There was a slight delay before Epsilon appeared, the hologram flickering intermittently.

“Al…Alison?” he asked, his voice fading in and out.

“No, my name is Carolina.”

“S-sorry. My mist– mistake,” he glanced around at the group of Reds and Blues. “Who are you people?”

“You don’t remember us?” Caboose asked.

“I– I’ve never seen— y— before in— life.”

“We don’t have much time,” Wash said. “Epsilon, we need you to get inside this memory unit.”

“Wh–y?”

Wash went to explain, but Donut cut him off.

“You can rest in there, Epsilon. It’ll be like a day spa!”

“And I’ll talk to you every day so that you can hear stories about us all,” Caboose added.

Grif thought it was dumb and that they should just say he’s dying and this will hopefully prevent that.

For some reason he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“I’ll save you some Oreo’s for when you get back.”

“As the leader of Blue Team, you deserve some well earned long service leave,” Sarge added gruffly.

“Wash is really good with building those things, it’ll be super nice in there.”

“Epsilon, you’re d–” Tucker cut Carolina off.

“Not well, and if you go in there, we can help you. Maybe not right now, but we’ll be working hard every single fucking day to figure out a way to help you.”

“I– c– rest?”

“Yeah, dude. You can rest.”

“Sounds nice, doesn’t it?” Carolina asked, her voice warm.

“Yeah…”

Wash activated the memory unit, the lights on it flashing green.

“I guess this is goodbye then…weird rainbow space marines.”

As soon as Epsilon touched the unit, the lights went red, indicating that it was currently occupied.

“Well, Red Team, we’ve got some strategies to discuss now that Blue team is down one member. Come on, boys, lets leave em be.” Sarge gave his team a look before they headed off.

Carolina looked at the unit for a moment before heading to Kimball’s office. Someone needed to tell her that their AI unit was no longer operational and they didn’t have an ETA for when it would be back online.

“Fucking asshole,” Tucker whispered furiously before walking off.

“Caboose? Are…are you going to be all right?”

Caboose nodded. “I will keep Epsilon company while he is resting,” he set a hand over the memory unit. “Just like last time.”


End file.
